Former Plymouth man again under federal scrutiny over explosives

Robert A. Rinaldi, a former Plymouth resident whose illegal, homemade fireworks rocked a Plymouth neighborhood in the 1990s is back in the cross hairs of federal investigators, having been linked to a case in Hanover.

A man whose illegal, homemade fireworks rocked a Plymouth neighborhood in the 1990s is back in the cross hairs of federal investigators, having been linked to a case in Hanover.

Robert A. Rinaldi, a former Plymouth resident who has been convicted in three cases of possessing and manufacturing explosives, is being investigated by authorities in Massachusetts and Tennessee, where he now lives, said Jennifer Mieth, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services.

The investigations stem from the arrest in May of a Hanover man who, according to police reports, told investigators that he bought dozens of explosives from Rinaldi, 62, at a construction site last summer.

The alleged sale would have come just months after Rinaldi was released from jail, where he had been serving a two-year sentence for possession of explosives. Under the terms of his probation, Rinaldi is prohibited from possessing firearms, explosives or explosives components, according to Coria Holland, spokeswoman for the Office of the Commissioner of Probation.

Holland said Rinaldi’s probation supervision was transferred to Tennessee authorities in February. The Tennessee Department of Correction said Friday that Rinaldi’s probation status was still active and no new charges had been filed against him.

Rinaldi’s affinity for explosives and fireworks has caused run-ins with police dating back to 1990, when State Police and federal agents raided his family’s home on Sandy Beach Road in Plymouth and seized illegal fireworks worth about $125,000. Six months later, on Jan. 1, 1991, a trailer packed with fireworks on the property caught fire and exploded, knocking a neighboring home off its foundation and damaging others.

Rinaldi, then 40, was badly burned in the fire and spent 10 weeks in the hospital. A police report from an arrest in 2010 stated that he had burns over 80 percent of his body.

After the fire, Rinaldi and his parents pleaded guilty to 18 charges of storing, selling and possessing fireworks and were placed on probation for two years.

But Rinaldi’s work with explosives didn’t end with the blast or the conviction. Eighteen years later, in April 2008, investigators returned to the Rinaldi home and carted away a truckload of explosives, black powder and chemicals. Three months later, police came back and found even more explosives.

At the time, Rinaldi told The Patriot Ledger that he made fireworks for competitions, not to “hurt anybody.”

“I enjoy fireworks, making pretty colors, making them do things in the sky,” he said at the time. “I’m an artist, and the sky is the canvas.”

Rinaldi also told The Ledger that he planned to leave Massachusetts and move to a state where fireworks were legal. But in 2010, after Rinaldi had moved to Rockland, investigators raided his Union Street home and found more improvised explosives and a variety of components.

Page 2 of 2 - At the time, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz called the explosives at Rinaldi’s home “a very real threat to the safety of that neighborhood.”

In March 2011, Rinaldi pleaded guilty to 41 explosives-related charges in two Brockton Superior Court cases stemming from the 2008 and 2010 raids. Judge Carol Ball sentenced him to two years in jail and gave him 255 days of time-served credit.

Rinaldi was released in May 2012 and placed on probation with the requirement that he stay away from all explosives.

Then, in May, police arrested a Hanover man and accused him of stockpiling more than 200 homemade explosives in a Norwell shed and setting off several in his Hanover neighborhood. The man, Jonathan Allen, told police he had bought the devices the previous summer from a man named Robert Rinaldi, who he said sold them for $3 apiece out of the back of a van, according to a police report on file at Hingham District Court.

Mieth, the spokeswoman for the Department of Fire Services, said investigators believe that the man who sold the explosives to Allen is the same man convicted of explosives possession in 2011.

“The case is being actively pursued by Massachusetts, Tennessee and federal authorities,” she said in an email.